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I use it for these things, they're ok. I occasionally try to get it to control an app, it usually fails, but that's my dream state: I'd like to be able to say,
by brownbat 9y ago
I use it for these things, they're ok. I occasionally try to get it to control an app, it usually fails, but that's my dream state: I'd like to be able to say, "Hey Google, open app X and do Y task."
But I don't know if there's enough incentive for apps to add an assistant interface. How easy is it to add commands on your app that it will accept via assistant? Are there common APIs or structures for this to shift the incentives, allow it to proliferate app by app, rather than waiting on the assistant developers to manually do each one?
After that we need to go back to Aza Raskin's project, uh, Ubiquity? Anyone could build little scripts, verbs, that helped build a natural language input from the ground up. That's how we get to stuff like, "Hey Google, take a screenshot of news.ycombinator.com and email it to Joe."
- konschubert 9y ago> Are there common APIs or structures for this to shift the incentives, allow it to proliferate app by app, rather than waiting on the assistant developers to manually do each one? I think once somebody finds a good API for that, it will be a watershed moment. Amazon Alexa has apps called "skills", but they expose their own voice interface which is always inconsistent.
- davedx 9y agoI always thought that Android's intents could be a good API for voice commands. It actually surprised me that we never really got much deep app integration with voice on Android phones given that API.
- gandutraveler 9y agoI can open app and ask for actions on Google assistant on my Pixel phone. I use things like - "Play <song> on Spotify" - "Send message <message> to <someone> on WhatsApp" - "Take a selfie or screenshot" Maybe app actions are only available on Pixel devices.
- piyush_soni 9y agoNo, they are available on all devices (at least on my Nexus 6P too). It's only a matter of which apps are implementing the "Actions on Google Assistant" and for which operations.
- brownbat 9y agoOh true, I shouldn't have been so universal. I want every app to start thinking about voice ux, but that's probably down to the individual apps, and you're right that some do. I can play some things on Stitcher, say, though I can't remember if I have to use podcast names specifically or if I can use my playlist names. Some Google apps don't seem to support it though. Ok Google, log my weight on Google fit as X? Search results page. Ok Google, play (my playlist name) on Google Play: plays unrelated radio station inspired by my playlist name, with sometimes comical results. I'm sure it will improve with time.